Public health improvements and mortality in interwar Tokyo: a Bayesian disease mapping approach

Kota Ogasawara (), Shinichiro Shirota () and Genya Kobayashi ()
Additional contact information
Kota Ogasawara: Tokyo Institute of Technology
Shinichiro Shirota: Duke University
Genya Kobayashi: Chiba University

Cliometrica, 2018, vol. 12, issue 1, No 1, 31 pages

Abstract: Abstract Recent studies have found that modern water supply systems played an important role in mitigating the mortality risks in major US cities in the early twentieth century. Modern water supply systems were installed also in Japanese cities during the interwar period. This study examines how the modern water supply system in Tokyo City reduced mortality risks in the interwar period. By employing a Bayesian disease mapping approach with a block-level lattice dataset of Tokyo for 1930, we found that wider access to purified water through water supply systems played an important role in mitigating mortality risks during the study period. Our estimation results show that clean water accounted for approximately 41.3 and 34.9 % of improvements in crude and child death rates, respectively, between 1921 and 1937 in Tokyo.

Keywords: Bayesian disease mapping; Public health; Modern water supply system; Mortality rates (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C11 C21 I18 N35 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11698-016-0148-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:cliomt:v:12:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1007_s11698-016-0148-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11698

DOI: 10.1007/s11698-016-0148-3

Access Statistics for this article

Cliometrica is currently edited by Claude Diebolt

More articles in Cliometrica from Springer, Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().